Crisis, Fragmentation, and the Limits of Multilateralism

Abstract

International organizations face a fundamental crisis of authority and effectiveness as they struggle to manage global challenges amid resource constraints, contested legitimacy, and divergent member state preferences. Crises that might be expected to strengthen multilateral cooperation instead often expose deep fractures in the institutional architecture of global governance. This panel examines how international organizations respond to crises and what these responses reveal about the limits of multilateral cooperation. How do global shocks affect state willingness to resource and empower international institutions? When do crises generate solidarity and institutional strengthening, and when do they fuel blame, retrenchment, and demands for control? The panel explores patterns of fragmentation across multiple domains. States increasingly disagree not only on policy design but on the fundamental purposes of international cooperation and the legitimacy of multilateral authority to define global public goods. Competing normative visions—security versus equity versus solidarity—operate not as complementary principles but as incommensurable social purposes that produce deadlock in treaty negotiations. Regime type and shifting power dynamics shape patterns of engagement and obstruction, as states remain formally within institutions while undermining them through discursive strategies and resource withholding. The panel contributes to understanding the contemporary crisis of multilateralism by examining how crises reshape institutional capacity, how bureaucratic agency operates under political constraint, and how normative fragmentation limits the ability of international organizations to construct durable frameworks for global cooperation.

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